"Friday's edition of The International Herald Tribune has a very
interesting discussion between three experts in Japanese equities
regarding the stock market, the global competitiveness of Japanese
companies, and trends to watch. The follow is an excerpt relevant to
the changing photographic industry. Though Pentax specifically is
mention, it really is about the changing nature of the entire
digital camera business.

"Abe: Let me discuss Pentax, of which we hold 21 percent. Pentax is
an optical technology company that is known for making single-reflex
lenses. Japanese camera makers have their roots in lens making and
optical technology. Leveraging its technological strength, Pentax
has diversified into endoscopy, an area that Japanese companies
monopolize (......)

The mistake that Pentax and other camera manufacturers made was in
digital cameras, which as a business are not like cameras but more
like home electronics, with short product cycles. It's not an
efficient business for camera manufacturers to be in. We have been
in talks with the Pentax management and have been suggesting that
they exit from digital camera manufacturing. (......)

Musha: One needs to understand that competitive Japanese companies
are not built on the "Silicon Valley model." Taiwan and Korean
manufacturers in principle follow this model, where you make use of
the basic prototype of the business, the technology and the
equipment, and you pour in capital and rapidly achieve a certain
scale. Your competitors can play catch-up very easily. Japanese
semiconductor companies were typical [in how they lost to the
competition] and the digital camera business falls in the same
category. It's a winner-take-all game where unless you become the
winner, you lose all your profits in the process of competition.
Japanese firms that have been in those types of businesses have all
been destroyed."

I hope it isn't too late for at least THIS camera manufacturer.. Many
others have already fallen - and it's been their own fault.

When they should have been promoting their traditional products and
marketing the strengths, they instead chose to promote effectively a
competitors product - the digital camera

It'll be interesting to see how and more importantly, IF any attempts to
re-market a product they abandoned as old fashioned and obsolete will be
successful ..or if all the camera makers we know today cease to exist in the
near future as Nokia and Samsung fill the void

I wish them luck and curse their initial greed and shortsightedness

k